Fire safety information for residents following the Grenfell Tower tragedy

Key message for residents

The fire at Grenfell Tower is horrifying for us all and the council has been supporting colleagues at K&C who are working non-stop to support those affected.

Of course it brings back memories for Southwark, and we learned many lessons from the tragic fire at Lakanal in 2009 and have invested £62m to improve the safety of all our council properties.

Our priority is always the safety of residents and we have done a huge amount of work, considering the best way to make residents across our huge and diverse estate more safe.

We work closely with the London Fire Brigade to carry out Fire Risk Assessments for all our blocks, develop our fire safety plans, and consider the needs of each block.

Our focus has been on preventing fires, having early warning systems (heat and smoke alarms in every habitable room) and preventing those that do occur from spreading through better compartmentation, which experts agree should be the focus.

Since we have carried out our fire safety works and fire risk assessments of all our blocks, several fires have started but been contained to one flat or even room because of the fire safety works we’ve done.

The London Fire Brigade visit and inspect our blocks regularly.

We follow the current regulations, but if new learning comes from Grenfell we will of course, with other councils, consider whether changes need to be made, as our priority is always the safety of our residents. We have ordered a full review of our fire safety strategy.